Review: Vivien Horler
Single Minded, a novel, by Marina Auer (Kwela)
The tagline on the cover is: “Welcome to Eden [State Hospital]. Good luck getting out alive.” Part 1 is titled: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
You get the picture.
It is January 2001and anaesthetist Murphy Meyer arrives at the hospital outside Pietermaritzburg on her first day in a new job. A crooked sign pockmarked with bullet holes proclaims “no firearms past this point”.
The driveway is potholed, and alighting from her car she nearly falls into an open drainage pit that has what she thinks is a kitten swimming in it, until it emerges and shows itself to be a rat.
Her horror sees a patient leaning on a crutch almost fall over with mirth. Continue reading
I like thrillers set in Cape Town, as long as the author doesn’t take too many chances – like the book I read a year or two ago in which a character caught a train from Bakoven. Eish.